Cryptography

I didn't collect much on Cryptography here yet, but you can
download my public keys for Pretty
good privacy (PGP) and GNU
Privacy Guard (GPG). I had trouble using the pgp key with
gpg (missing idea encryption which was enforced by the key) so
you can grab either one depending on the program you intend to
use.

To download the keys instead of displaying them in the
webbrowser you probably have to shift-click or right-click and
select from the menu. They are plain ASCII so you can also
copy-paste them into an editor window without damaging them.

What's this all about?

E-Mail is insecure. Whoever is sitting at a computer (or
the local network of each of them) involved in transporting
the mail to/from you can read and change it. Thats similar to
a postcard everybody can read. Why don't you write everything
as postcards? You don't want everybody to read them? Well why
are you sending unencrypted E-mails? Modern strong encryption
allows you to protect your E-mail from the wrong eyes or your
friendly Bastard
operators from hell from changing them into something you
didn't intend to write. Asymmetric encrytion as implemented in pgp and
GnuPG make the key exchange quite secure if one is a little
bit careful.

Another option for sending mails to anybody without a prior
key exchange is a cryptogaphic signature. The mail can be read
by anybody, but you can prove if somebody was
tampering with the content. Also if the recipient is
interested and checks your signature he can be pretty sure
(depending how much he trusts the public key he has from you)
that the mail is indeed from you. This is another big problem
on the Internet, as its extremely easy to fake ones identity.
In Germany check with the c't cryptography campaign at www.heise.de to get your
public key certified. Then the recipient of your mails can
even be sure that you are who you say you are (at least the
name is the one in your Passport).

There is an
interesting page collecting a variety of crytography
programs and security flaws. It has also a short statement on "ethics of spying"
at the bottom of the page which is interesting to read.